satisfaction that both he and his wife received the intelligence that he was the son and the only son of one of Toledo’s most “prominent” citizens, a gentleman actively and effectively engaged in furthering the progress of civilization by the manufacturing of automobiles. Dangelis was, indeed, a prospective, if not an actual, millionaire, and, from all that could be learned, it appeared that the prominent citizen of Toledo handed over to his son an annual allowance equal to the income of many crowned heads. The Pariah of Nevilton House--the luckless child of the Apennines--found little to admire in this energetic wanderer. His oratorical manner, his abrupt, aggressive courtesies, his exuberant high spirits, the sweep and swing of his vigorous personality, the extraordinary mixture in him of pedantry and gaiety, jarred upon her sensitive over-strung nerves. In his boyish desire to please her, hearing that she came from Italy, the good-natured artist would frequently turn the conversation round to the beauty and romance of that “garden of the world,” as he was pleased to style her home; but the tone of these discourses increased rather than diminished Lacrima’s obstinate reserve. He had a habit of referring to her country as if it were a place whose inhabitants only existed, by a considerate dispensation of Providence, to furnish a charming background for certain invaluable relics of antiquity. These precious fragments, according to this easy view of things, appeared to survive, together with their appropriate guardians, solely with the object of enlarging and inspiring the voracious “mentality” of wayfarers from London and New York. Grateful as Lacrima was for the respite the artist brought her from the despotism of her cousin, she could not bring herself to regard him, so far as she herself was concerned, with anything but extreme reserve and caution. One peculiarity he displayed, filled her with shy dismay. Dangelis had a trick of staring at the people with whom he associated, as if with a kind of quizzical analysis. He threw her into a turmoil of wretched embarrassment by some of his glances. She was troubled and frightened, without being able to get at the secret of her agitation. Sometimes she fancied that he was wondering what he could make of her as a model. The idea that anything of this kind should be expected of her filled her with nervous dread. At other times the wild idea passed through her brain that he was making covert overtures to her, of an amorous character. She thought she intercepted once or twice a look upon his face of the particular kind which always filled her with shrinking apprehension. This illusion--if it were an illusion--was far more alarming than any tendency he might display to pounce on her for æsthetic purposes; for the Pariah’s association with the inhabitants of Nevilton House had not given her a pleasing impression of human amorousness.